Why PMO Implementations Fail
31
ment (EPM) tools that are top of the line and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. PMOs may also use tools to improve visibility of real-time project progress data. These are all important items to consider. The maturity of the organization with respect to project management skills has a large impact on the acceptance by the user community of the EPM tools and processes. Often in organizations with low project management maturity, sophisticated tools meet heavy resistance. This is especially true with functional units that are normally autonomous to the enterprise in how they manage their work. This resistance is affected by the dynamics of how different functional units compete with one another for shared resources. Almost all organizations have functional units that perform better than others, or are “more favored” by the CEO. This pecking order creates political incentive for those “less favored” units. Thus, the political environment and the CEO or senior management can drive what tools will be accepted and supported across the organization. If the PMO begins business without a marketing plan to gain strong buy-in on tool usage from most, if not all, functional units, the PMO will have begun its own death march. The KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) formula works best at the beginning. Thus, in a PMO startup, the PMO must understand functional unit behavior characteristics and needs. The PMO must determine what is in it for each functional unit. A PMO that has solid knowledge of the different politics in play and the drivers for each functional unit will be able to establish itself more quickly as the “best friend” of the enterprise. Such a PMO can avoid falling into the trap of becoming a “process cop.”
THE “RIGHT” DATA Today, many functional units are covered in mudslides of data. They are overwhelmed and not able to sift through the data and transform it into information useful to them. In every type of organization, profit or non-profit, functional units compete with one another every day. The issue is often scarce resources or different views of how and where to change the organization. When it comes to scare resources, functional units often view themselves as stand-alone. To survive, they must compete or risk falling to the last spot and missing their fiscal year objectives. The challenge for the PMO is to assist these units to be collectively better at project delivery. In order to improve, project delivery must be measured. The measurement process is often accomplished through project status reporting from all identified projects that are key to the business.